Power = The heaviest loads you can most at the fastest speeds effectively.

Simples.

In programming certain clients training I like to follow this little set up.

– Flow

– Fast

– Slow

This translates in to some form of movement complex to get the body primed, hence the term flow.

Second is the power elements of training. These can eb bodyweight movements, classic lifts, odd objects or some sort of sporting necessity/skill.

Finally it’s time for lift a tad heavier which will slow the pace of the lifts down, not too much so that it’d detrimental, just more a case of classic strength work to add some lean mass.

*Personally I would still advice people to lift concentrically as fast (powerfully) as possible with the loads they are using, CAT style ala Dr Squat as this will force more motor unit recruitment, meaning more overall gains in the end.

Using the above how would you put that in to a session?

Here is an example:

Flow – Mobility Complex

Fast – Kettlebell Snatches, Kettlebell Jerks

Slow – Deadlift, Presses, Pull Ups, Postural Work

Then perhaps some classic stretching to finish up, or plan in a couple of stretching based days or perhaps do yoga once or twice a week.

Power style training is great fun, and very rewarding.

Reps classically are less then 5, while not set in stone it’s a good starting point.

When looking at this kind of method you want to move each rep as fast as possible wile maintaining good form, if you start to slow or form goes you stop and rest.

Loading is up for discussion depending on the goal.

You could use anywhere from 30-80% of 1RM for power work.

Sets, it ends up being fairly high 6-8 is common for 4-5 reps, 8+ more so when doing 3’s and below.

Rest periods can clock in up to 5min, perhaps more, or just as soon as you feel ready to go again, go by feel on this one.

Splitting your training days in to Pull-Push-Legs, or Lower-Upper, maybe Anterior-Posterior all work, as does full body, my best advice is to find one that you enjoy as that will become more sustainable in the early stages.

If your goal is fat loss, conditioning, adding some lean mass and generally feeling like you’ve done something in a session then this is for you.

’60days of Loaded Carries’

Or perhaps I should say Loaded Movements.

Yep, you will do ONE loaded carry a day for 60 days, it’s that simple.

Here is a step by step breakdown:

– Pick a carry

– Set a timer for 45min

– Pick up, carry, put down, repeat until the time is up

That’s it.

Now a carry can be many things, for example a farmers walk with a sand bag, a turkish get up followed by a waiters walk, a Zecher DL followed by a Zecher carry, essentially any awkward object to carry will do.

How you choose to pick up, hold and carry said object is up to you, just pick something different each day to keep things interesting and avoid too much crossover and fatigue in identical movement patterns.

The premise of this is to force you to train inefficiently, please note this does not mean unsafe, it merely means making your body coordinate in a manor that it is not used to doing so that you will burn more energy (calories) along with adding some slabs of lean muscle.

Essentially what old school labourers used to do day in day out, which is a good point, why to load up a wheel barrow and shift that bad boy around for 45min, most challenging.

When performing each movement go until about an RPE 8/9, don’t try and fail, stop short, the aim is to get in as much overall workload (volume) as possible.

Select weights that are challenging, not impossible.

This is an endeavour of endurance not ego.

Be sure to take before and after photos, also, if you want some guidelines for calories then this will be a quick guide to help you:

– Fat loss = your total bodyweight x 11-13

– Mass gain = your total bodyweight x 17-19

Ideally you will be eating plenty of ‘whole foods’ as in not junk food if you want some decent progress.

^^ A sentence many a man has said over the years and continues to say to this day.

“I want to be lean and strong”

^^ Something I’m pleased to announce more women are saying, it seems there has been a shift in them saying ‘I just want to be skinny’ to now learning the benefit of being lean and strong, it’s great to see.

While it is only my opinion, I feel everybody should be strong.

I’m not talking about record breaking strong, just strong enough to stay healthy and stave off the effects of ageing on the body.

These sports all centre around lifting:

– Weightlifting (olympic lifting)

– Body Building

– Powerlifting

– Strongman

– CrossFit (some may not like this one)

Did you know lifting weights can have the following positive effects on the body:

Personally I’d say the mental improvement is the pivotal one as this can have the biggest impact on a persons life in a very positive way.

However….

If you’re not an athlete and lift for health/confidence you should do it because you enjoy it, not because you feel you have to, that’s the secret to balance and long term sustainability.

Don’t eat yourself up if you miss a session, chalk it up to life and sue it as a rest day, that way you’ll be more motivated when you get to go in, excited to train in fact. Keep this in mind and you’ll find you don’t fall out of love with training.

What if lifting isn’t for you?

That’s cool, find soothing you do enjoy, here are some other options for improving strength and all achieving all the other benefits mentioned above:

It has and will always be asked because people want to find that magic/perfect answer that will allow them to make the fastest progress with the least possible effort. However, the answer will usually stay they same as well. What is the answer?

“It depends.”

Or does it?

If you read enough and look in the right places you can find your answers, so long as you read objectively and understand that what ever your reading is only a snippet of the bigger picture.

The answer for building strength (motor unit recruitment) with additional hypertrophy is what we will look at today.

There are many fine books out there on the science and principles of training. They all have various things in common, one in particular being that Overload must be achieved through optimal stimulus that is specifically relevant to the goal. However due to the law of accommodation the original stimulus you expose yourself to eventually yields diminishing returns because your body always finds a way of becoming efficient and adapted, this is where you need to increase the stimulus to once again initiate this process (training facilitates an increase in protein synthesis meaning more potential growth, but that’s a topic for another day).

This is not a new concept, your body will adapt and progress, thus you will have a higher starting point for your next cycle of training. While you may have to drop some sets/reps to start again it will allow for recovery/adaptation so you can keep moving forwards. Think two steps forwards one step back.

Each time you subject your body to overload and recover/adapt from that overload you will be able to do more because of an increased tolerance/baseline (Strength, CV etc). In short the more you do the more you need to do to keep progressing or in fact maintain what you have. The old adage of ‘Use it or lose it’ is actually true, while it might not be in the form of muscular atrophy there will some motor pattern recruitment degradation which means you won’t recruit as many fibers in one go and lift less overall.

So what does that have to do with answering the question of the optimal set/rep range? Well thanks to a great many people who were diligent enough to record hundreds of athletes training routines spanning 50+ years, we can see a general pattern and what is more effective, in a general sense based on that particular mesocycle. A good book for your reference is the Science & Practice of Strength Training By Zatsiorsky & Kramer if you wish to know what I am basing this post on (it’s been a while since I read it, hopefully I won’t be too far out with the numbers.).

There are some factors you will want to keep in mind before we go on:

– Loading (weight on the bar)
– Number of Reps performed
– Volume (total amount of weight lifted overall with X weight)
– Density of Workout (sets performed in 1 hour)

The information I am basing this on was one that followed the Olympic Weightlifting teams in their run up to the 1972, 1976 & 1988 games. Their average reps in the assistance lifts – Squat, FS, Deadlift, RDL, Pressing, Rows etc (not the competition lifts of Clean & Jerk/Snatch) fell in the range of 2-7 reps with the most frequently used being 5-6, their average sets in this was logged at 24-26 (weekly for each cycle). The athletes did use 7+ rep ranges but the total sets were a lot lower, this was down to the overall mechanical/movement/muscular fatigue occurred that may impact the frequency of their training. It seemed that the average of 25-50 reps per session for assistance exercises was the norm. This was not on one exercise but across all exercises for the lower or upper muscle groups respectively.

When it came to their loading 35% of the total load was set at 70-80% of their respective maxes, then 26% in 90% and 24% in 60-70%. When you look at the overall they spent 59% of their time training in the 60-80% loading rage, this would be because of the ability to recover not only physically but also neurologically from this amount of load. When you take your loading to 90%+ you will find there is a heavy demand on the CNS and also the mind as well. The total volume for the 60-80% would be made up of multiple sets of 4-7 where as the 90+ would be 1-3.

*When strength training you want to recruit the maximal amount of fibers possible to elicit the largest response, put simply. This will help you make the most potential progress, provided you adequately recover and have optimal nutrition (while some functional overreaching is good, too much will result in burn out, no progress or potentially regression. It’s all about finding that balance in the most amount of work you can recover from while still increasing your work load over time.).

So what can you take away from this to help you build strength and size? Based on the higher end numbers, because no one really want to lift light weights, these are some guidelines to follow:

– Loading – 70-80%
– Reps – 4-7
– Sets – 6+ (25-50 total reps per session will influence this)
– Density – You may start with 25 reps for a total at 6x4x80% done twice per week being enough to elicit a positive adaptation while recovering, the density can increase by adding sets for example and building to 50 rep total 12x4x80%.

These are by no means rules that are set in stone, however they have been proven to work in the past. If you are looking to build a solid performance based foundation. For the average person I would advice at least 72 hours between sessions such as these. you might end up with something that looks like this:

*You will do well to pick exercises that will give you the most band for your buck – large compound movements.

Use these guidelines and find the most you can do while still recovering and adding more. You can push typically hard for around 3 weeks, then you need to drop it back. This can mean lowering the volume/intensity to your original starting point before you undergo a new 3 week accumulation phase (remember the intensity will be higher than your first phase – eg phase 1 100kg 6×4 to phase to 105kg 6×4).